Unrepresentative Sample

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart decided to gauge the popularity of the field of Democratic presidential candidates by putting the matter to his Twitter followers. The results were interesting:

What I found out was actually rather interesting. I couldn’t get through all of the more than 1,000 responses that I’d received by 1 p.m. on Thursday, but I got through enough to notice a really interesting pattern among my admittedly unscientific and self-selecting sample. While the new polls show former vice president Joe Biden as the runaway favorite in the crowded field, he’s not among the favorites of the folks who responded to me.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) was the favorite by far. She was the first choice of 117 respondents. That includes the 10 people who gave her all three of their slots and six people who gave her two out of the three. Seventy-five gave Harris their second slot, and 24 more made her their third choice.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was the next favorite with 49 people giving her their first slot. But folks loved giving her their second slot, as 82 of them did, the most of any candidate. Another 51 responders made Warren their third choice, again the most of anyone in my count. Biden snagged 17 first slots, 17 second and 48 third.

I have no idea of the demographic breakdown of Mr. Capehart’s Twitter followers. I doubt that he does, either. I would speculate that whatever their demographic characteristics they aren’t representative of anything other than Jonathan Capehart’s Twitter followers.

I found this statement particularly interesting:

Harris represents the future of the Democratic Party: A woman and person of color in a party whose foundation rests with African American women.

There are so many things wrong with that statement it’s hard to know where to start. Presently, 74% of Americans are white. The proportion of voters is larger. The percentage of African American women is about 8%. IMO if the future of the party resides in African American women, the party is in terrible, terrible trouble.

But here’s another question for you. Whom does Kamala Harris represent? Do African American women accept her as a “woman of color” or, as Eugene Scott wondered:

Harris has had some different life experiences than many black Americans. Her father is a Jamaican immigrant; her mother is a Tamil Indian immigrant. Her husband is a white man from New York. While she was born in Oakland — a city with a rich history of African American activism — Harris spent her early childhood in Berkeley, Calif., and worshiped at a Hindu temple in addition to attending black Baptist services. She attended high school in Montreal before returning to the United States for college at Howard University, a historically black college.

IMO her candidacy will occasion a debate which is encapsulated here:

“This whole argument that we’re saying she’s not black is really ridiculous,” Yvette Carnell, co-founder of the American Descendants of Slavery movement, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We’re saying there is a difference in the justice demands for people who are descendants of slaves in this country and those who were enslaved in Jamaica.”

Carnell fleshed out the argument further Wednesday, tweeting:

“Kamala Harris doesn’t have that in her lineage. She’s anchored in two affluent, immigrant parents. It’s really simple. So since Kamala Harris doesn’t have this experience in her background, or a track record that expresses this understanding, and she announced during MLK Week, at Howard University, of course she’s going to get pressed HARD on the specificity of her #ADOS Agenda.”

(The ADOS, or American Descendants of Slavery, movement seeks to draw attention to the policy issues affecting the lives of blacks who descended from American slaves.)

That’s not frivolous. It will be a serious issue within the black community and it may well be one that the Democratic Party might wish to avoid.